The 30 Second Deer

  There isn’t a deer hunter that hasn’t spent countless hours in a stand, blind or stalking. We get out and scout to find good spots then more time building blinds and setting stands. Some of the luckier ones have big permanent blinds over fields that are prepared every year just for the deer. But for most it is long hours of getting prepared with more long hours of sitting in blinds like steam rooms in early season to freezing in the rain, snow and cold late season. But sometimes you just get lucky.
  This is one of those times. Now it wasn’t me but a cousin that got lucky and like the hunt the story doesn’t take long so here we go.
I had gotten a call from my brother asking if I wanted to go to one of our spots near the Kentucky line in Robertson county. We kill a lot of deer there even though we only hunt a couple of spots on the 90 acre farm. He had several blinds set up around the property but I usually hunted one while he hunted another. He had killed his biggest buck there, a 154” 10 pointer so we tried to get there whenever possible. I said sure and headed to his house only to find our cousin there. He didn’t get to hunt often so it wasn’t a problem to take him along.
  We loaded up for the hour long drive. We were bad to rib the guys that don’t take the deer we do so cousin got the worst of it. He gave back pretty good so the drive was big fun and we got to the farm still loud and joking. This was an afternoon hunt and we had decided to put him in a blind on the far corner of the farm that never got hunted.
  As we pulled up I got out to help him get his gear in the blind. We are still joking, slamming blind and truck doors as I throw his vest and hat to him. My brother is, well not yelling, but loudly talking from inside the truck giving last minute instructions. Cousin starts into the blind after getting his .270 loaded and I jump in the truck as we start to head across the field to our blinds. We hadn’t gone 100 yards when the phone rings.
Brother, “Hello.”
“I just smoked that b…h!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I just smoked one!”
  Looking at me, brother says “I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about let’s go see.”
  I am looking at him as he points over his shoulder at the blind. I turn around to look as he turns the truck. Cousin is standing beside the blind looking down the fence row. As we pull up he comes over, sticks his head in the window and says again, “I just smoked one!” while pointing to a spot about 70 yards away.
Sure enough there is a big doe laid out, shot in the neck. She dropped in her tracks. I walked over with him to check her out. I looked up and had to ask.
“Why did you shoot her in the neck?”
“I didn’t want her to run.”
“Well, it worked.” shaking my head.
  Turns out as we pulled away doe critter jumps the fence and stands watching us leave. All we can think is she was used to the farmer feeding the cows near there, which he does, and thought it was him laying out a free meal. She paid no attention to all of our noise and barely waited for the truck to pull off to jump into the field. It was either that or a suicide. Whichever, it was indeed the fastest, strangest deer hunt we had ever been on.